At this point, 2025 feels well behind us at this point, no? Here in the last week of February, we are now one-sixth of the way through 2026, and the holiday season already feels like a distant memory. While all that may be true, however, the box office record books for any year remain open until every release has made its last dollar – and that’s why we can now report that Jared Hess’ A Minecraft Movie has been usurped as the biggest domestic release of 2025.
Premiering last April, the video game movie spent the vast majority of last year as the biggest theatrical release in the United States and Canada, having completed its big screen run in the market making $424.1 million. According to Deadline, that total has now been topped by the monster success that is Byron Howard and Jared Bush’s Zootopia 2, which has been going strong since being released over Thanksgiving, has now made $424.2 million… and it’s not done yet.
Looking at this past weekend’s box office report, one will recognize that Zootopia 2 is still hanging around in the Top 10, and it’s even making more money domestically at this point than James Cameron’s Avatar: Fire And Ash, despite the science-fiction blockbuster arriving in theaters nearly a month later. Even more impressively, the Walt Disney Animation Studios release has been outgrossing its predecessor from day one. The 2025 movie had a bigger opening weekend ($100.3 million vs. $75.1 million), and the 2016 feature only made $341.3 million in the United States and Canada.
As impressive as Zootopia 2’s numbers are at home, they get even more outrageous when you look at its performance worldwide – and it’s another page in the record books where it outshines A Minecraft Movie. The film starring Jack Black and Jason Momoa was unquestionably a massive smash – earning $961.2 million around the globe, but the Disney film has made over $1.8 billion. It would be the biggest title of 2025 if it weren't for the $2 billion success of the animated Chinese film Ne Zha 2 from writer/director Jiaozi.
From a wide perspective, all of this success particularly shines a light on how well family films have been doing at the box office as of late – and it suggests big things to come as we get deeper into the 2026 movie release calendar and see the theatrical arrivals of major animated titles including but not limited to Daniel Chong's Hoppers (March 6), Andrew Stanton's Toy Story 5 (June 19), Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic's The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (April 1), Josie Trinidad and Jason Hand's Hexed (November 25), and Pierre Coffin's Minions & Monsters (July 1).
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